David Fincher’s Fight Club only ever had one rule. It’s a well known one. Emma Seligman’s 2023 high school update doubles the number. Rule one of Bottoms’ ‘gay, untalented, and ugly’ Fight Club is straightforward enough. Listen. Always and to everything. The second is more flexible: never ever – ever! – be late. Unless, that is, you’re a smoking hot cheerleader, who may or may not be an as-yet-undiscovered lesbian. Let’s add a third. The third rule of this Fight Club is that all members must spread the word. Talk about it! Bottoms is a blisteringly funny new elementary comedy and right up there in the pantheon of genre classics.
Blumhouse have grand ambitions for Five Nights at Freddy’s. It’s why so much of this inaugural adaptation of the wildly popular video game franchise feels like set up. Certainly, there’s more mythos than murder here. Perhaps, in the long run, this will pay off. There’s no doubting a sequel will come, with box office records already set to tumble. A lack of gore, securing a lower than expected age certification, will go a long way in audience reach and potential. But that’s all business-speak. Where is the thrill and flair? What of the story? In the here and now, episode one is much too muted for its own good. Often dull, even. There’s much to admire but not quite enough to inspire great yearning for a sixth night on the big screen.
With more sparkles than an Liberace tribute act, the third Trolls film is the franchise’s trippiest yet. A mind boggling feature of the sort students will one day discover to be best experienced while high as kites. Few films this year will offer cinematography so chromatically effervescent, nor a soundtrack so mercilessly upbeat. It’s hard to imagine any other family flick this decade will force the BBFC to warn of ‘sex references’ – and they are pretty darn filthy when you spot them. Yup, Band Together is, without question, total mayhem. Hogwash too. Broken down, the film is incoherently plotted, structurally baffling and tonally nauseating. More notably, however, it is also cinematic Stockholm Syndrome in action. These Trolls (still) just want to have fun and their joie de vivre is (still) hugely infectious.
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